The pressure intensified again.
Itsuki felt it in the tightening of his chest and the clarity behind his eyes.
The more powerful the witnesses, the sharper his perception became. Chakra flowed with greater precision, compressing and circulating in cleaner currents. The three-tomoe Sharingan spun steadily, almost complete in its refinement. The strain that once lingered at the edges of his vision had thinned to a faint echo.
Just a little more, he thought.
He raised his hand and beckoned lazily toward the three masked jōnin.
"Go on," he said with a faint smile. "Show me what you've got."
The gesture rippled through the crowd like a thrown stone.
Was this still an early graduation exam?
The chūnin had fallen instantly. Now three jōnin stood opposite a five-year-old, yet somehow it felt reversed—as if they were the ones being evaluated.
"Formation."
The three moved at once.
They split and repositioned, forming a triangle around Itsuki with disciplined precision.
Good coordination, he noted. Trained together.
Their hands flashed through seals.
"Fire Style: Dragon Flame Jutsu!"
Three pillars of fire roared forward simultaneously from three directions.
The speed of a jōnin's execution was incomparable to an Academy student's. Four seals. Less than a second. The flames converged in a tightening arc, cutting off retreat angles.
From the spectators' perspective, there was nowhere to run.
Tsunade folded her arms. "Finally. Let's see him deal with that."
Jiraiya exhaled slowly. "If this goes wrong, you're handling the medical side."
Orochimaru's golden eyes did not blink. "He won't fall so easily."
Across the field, Hyūga Hiashi narrowed his gaze. "He's cornered."
"Not yet," his father murmured.
On the Uchiha side, Fugaku's hands clenched instinctively.
Kazuma did not look away.
"Watch carefully," he said quietly.
Back at the center—
Itsuki's Sharingan flared.
Three trajectories.
Heat distortion.
Air displacement.
Within a heartbeat, the pattern resolved.
There.
A narrow gap.
Chakra surged.
Wind wrapped around his body, compressing against his limbs. Lightning threaded through muscle and nerve, igniting every fiber with explosive clarity. The sensation was not pain. It was awakening.
"Wind–Lightning Body Flicker."
The ground cracked beneath his sandals.
To the crowd, he vanished.
Not blurred.
Gone.
A streak of blue-white light tore through the closing flames, threading the one safe vector between the converging Dragon Fire techniques.
The explosion of colliding fire roared behind him.
Thunder split the air.
One of the three jōnin barely registered movement before impact.
Itsuki appeared at his flank—no, slightly behind him. Perfect angle.
His leg drove forward.
Lightning-coated momentum amplified by wind acceleration.
The kick landed cleanly against the jōnin's ribs.
The sound was not dramatic.
It was decisive.
The masked shinobi lifted from the ground—not launched, but violently displaced—and crashed into the dirt several meters away, skidding to a halt.
Silence followed.
The flames dissipated.
Itsuki stood where the triangle had been broken, lightning fading from his limbs.
Two jōnin remained.
Their posture had changed.
No longer testing.
Now cautious.
Itsuki rolled his shoulder once.
"Next," he said calmly.